Diary of a Camper

Diary of a Camper occurs entirely on the Quake map "The Dark Zone", with all dialogue displayed as text messages. After exploring some of the area, the Rangers gather and send two members to scout a room above. After they teleport into the room, a camper waiting there kills them both. The remaining three Rangers realize their comrades' fate and return fire from a distance, killing the camper. Examining the camper's remains, they identify their foe as John Romero, designer of Quake.[1][2]

In the 1970s and 80s, demoscene developers showcased their talents creating demos—short introductory audiovisual presentations. The demoscene inspired id Software's John Carmack's approach to development. Id's 1993 computer game Doom featured a gameplay recording tool that produced its own demo files; these files contained information about character positions and game events, and could be played back by others using the Doom game engine. This enabled smaller file sizes than rendered video frames, and facilitated easy file sharing in an era of slow internet speeds.[3][4] Doom's successor, Quake, included new multiplayer gameplay and customization options,[5] and expanded the gameplay recording feature.[6] As Quake's multiplayer became popular, players began recording matches to study their performance or impress others with their skills.[7] Director and animator Paul Marino noted that players shifted to recording deathmatches with a more cinematic flair, and that the player's point of view increasingly became that of a director as well. Groups of players known as clans hosted demo files on the web for easy distribution.[8] Uwe Girlich, a German doctoral candidate,[9] had documented the Quake demo file format,[10][11] and suggested that Quake could replace a dedicated 3D modeling program.[10][11]

One such Quake clan, the Rangers (itself a common term for the game's players and clan members),[12] had made a name for themselves with Quake highlight videos, and for their ability to program game modifications.[13][4] Members of the Rangers conceived the idea to use Quake for filmmaking in August 1996, two months after the game's release.[4] The demo was recorded in Quake's networked multiplayer deathmatch mode.[7] As the film was created before any demo-editing software tools had been publicly released, clan member Eric "ArchV" Fowler instead created his own tools to reposition the camera and to splice recorded footage.[14] Heath "ColdSun" Brown wrote the story, and Matt "Unknown Soldier" Van Sickler was the director.[15] In the release notes, Brown credits clan members Chris "Sphinx" Birke[16] and Mute with helping Fowler with "movie packaging".[1]

The Rangers released Diary of a Camper on October 26, 1996.[17][18] While the film contained the usual action and gore of previous gameplay demos and deathmatches, it added the context of a simple story.[7][13][19] It marked a transition from competitive, sportslike play to moviemaking, with players working as actors.[7][20] Lowood stated that "Diary of a Camper breaks with the demo movie as documented gameplay by moving away from the traditional first-person perspective of players.[10]

Diary of a Camper and the films that it inspired were initially called "Quake movies"; the term machinima was coined in 1998,[21] in response to the increasing use of other game engines to make similar content.[22] Separating machinima from the demoscene and earlier demo recordings, Diary of a Camper is often called the first work of machinima.[23][24]

Despite Diary of a Camper's importance in establishing machinima, contemporary commentators criticized the film's actual content. Marino called the plot "simple";[25] likewise, Kelland, Morris, and Lloyd believed that "it wasn't much of a story",[7] and Lowood wrote that "the plot offers little more than a brief sequence of inside jokes".[10] Among major Quake movie review sites,[26] Roger Matthews of the Quake Movie Library called the film "not much more than a deathmatch with a camera".[27] On Psyk's Popcorn Jungle, Paul Coates wrote, "This movie is dull. It is not very interesting."[28] Stephen Lum of The Cineplex criticized the film for its "weird humour".[29]

Although Quake movie critics found shortcomings in Diary of a Camper, they mentioned positive aspects, including the work's novelty; however, their final ratings varied. Matthews wrote that "the camera work was very nice and never once screwed up",[27] and Lum gave the film "a perfect 10 for Innovation/Originality because [it] started the Quake Movie craze".[29] Of the major Quake movie review sites, only The Cineplex gave Diary a good rating overall, 7.5 out of 10.[29] Matthews and Coates rated the film 20%,[27] and 2 out of 10,[30] respectively. Later, Coates updated his review, saying, "I feel I overreacted at the fact that DoaC was old. It's the first ever Quake movie. I have to give the Rangers massive credit for that.... But, by today's standards, the rating seems to fit."[28]

Diary of a Camper would be a major influence on other creators and game developers; in a 2020 interview, John Romero stated that some developers he knew introduced custom camera tools in response to the film to facilitate machinima production.[31] In Intermedia Games—Games Inter Media, professor and video game researcher Riccardo Fassone described the film as a "ur-machinima", stating that it would go on to "define" machinima but that the medium would use more complex narratives and become more institutionalized in the following years.[32] Because of its significance, Diary of a Camper continues to be featured in machinima presentations. It was one of the first works to be included in the Machinima Archive, a collaboration among Stanford University, the Internet Archive, the AMAS, and machinima.com.[33] In a 2005 event at Stanford University, the film was presented with later machinima works, such as Red vs. Blue.[34] Likewise, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image included it in a 2006 machinima exhibit.[35]

• A film clip of Diary of a Camper is available at the Internet Archive